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With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. Summer is in full swing and so is the Washington Red Raspberry harvest.

Raspberry Commission Executive Director, Henry Bierlink says they’re taking the good with bad when it comes to the weather this year …

HENRY BIERLINK … “Yeah, you can’t really ask for better weather from what we’ve had this summer. We had a rather harsh Winter and a really wet and kind of late Spring, but we are enjoying the benefits of a really beautiful Summer. A perfect time for the harvest to come in.”

Bierlink says the berries may be enjoying the weather too, but maybe a little too much…

HENRY BIERLINK … “Raspberries are in full force and I think they’re showing some wear as a result of the Winter and the late Spring. And we’re seeing some of the earlier varieties, or the more predominant variety which is Meeker, just has probably peaked already and is probably headed down. So, we’re looking for a, sort of a significantly lower crop than what we had in the past, at least last year. We had a big year last year and this year we’re going to be down. The Wakefield variety, which is the other and second most dominant variety is a little later and just starting to peak.”

Bierlink says last year is hard to compete with …

HENRY BIERLINK … “Yeah, last year was a good, a really, I mean a top year. We’ve never had as many berries come in as last year in the state of Washington. We were in about the 76-million-pound range. We will be between 20 to 30 percent down this year.”

Listen tomorrow when we hear more about this year’s harvest and how the market for raspberries is looking at about the midway point of the 2017 harvest.